


Love Run A’Fowl

by FadedSepia



Series: Clint Barton Bingo Lines [5]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: At least he tried, Autumn, Cock Warming, Cock Warming Fails, Failed Romantic Gesture, Herman - Freeform, Languages, M/M, Romantic Gesture, Search Results, The Things You'll Do For Love, puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 00:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FadedSepia/pseuds/FadedSepia
Summary: Bucky wants to do something special for Clint; something his boyfriend has said he’d really like. It’s supposed to be a surprise, and it certainly is… Onlymaybenot the way Bucky had intended.





	Love Run A’Fowl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elenorasweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenorasweet/gifts).

> So I took on this prompt (Cockwarming) as a challenge. But some of y’all – like a certain awesome fast beta-reader _*cough cough CB cough*_ – know me, so you shouldn’t be surprised. In terms of the _Fluffy Fibre Fics_ series, this is actually set before any of the others, early in Bucky and Clint’s relationship.

“Bucky?” Clint trailed behind his boyfriend through the fallow field, hands in his pockets.

“Yeah, doll?”

“Why are we here?” The _here_ in question was his family’s farm, which, though pleasant, had not been where Clint expected his boyfriend to ask to go for their brief few days of vacation. His sister in law had been happy to host them – putting them up in the barn she’d converted to a guest space for… _reasons_ – but the request had been out of character for Bucky. Despite his love of chunky sweaters from Wanda, Bucky was hardly outdoorsy.

Pausing, the man in question reached for his hand, the metal a little cool, even through Clint’s glove. “Remember last week, when we were talking?”

“Babe, we’re talking right now.” Clint squeezed Bucky’s hand with a chuckle.

“Yeah, but… I meant when we were _talking…”_ Bucky smiled shyly and looked away

They hadn’t gone too far in their relationship before Clint had learned that the reputation of Bucky “Panty Dropper” Barnes was more embellished than Thor’s embroidery. Bucky was an incorrigible flirt, to be sure, but pressing him to _act_ on his words was another story. Clint’s boyfriend still sometimes ducked his head when they finished necking in the movie theatre, and the theatre was on a private – and, if they were in it, _locked_ – room in the tower. No wonder Bucky had been a wreck on the drive up, if he’d been planning a surprise related to any of their pillow talk.

“We _talked_ about a lot.” With a chuckle, Clint pulled him in closer, bending so their foreheads nearly touched.

“Yeah, but…” Keeping his eyes on the ground did nothing to help Bucky hide his full-face blush or nervous smile. “You mentioned something you might be interested in, and this was the perfect place.”

“The middle of nowhere, surrounded by corn?”

“Mmhmm. No one for miles.” Bucky leaned in closer, snuggling against his neck a moment. “Place all to ourselves so we don’t have to be… _quiet.”_ Tipping his head back, he rubbed his thumb over the back of Clint’s hand. “Close your eyes?”

“Why?”

“Because I spent all afternoon setting this up, and I want it to be a surprise?”

Staring down at those hopeful grey eyes, Clint couldn’t say no. He _could_ plant a kiss on the tip of Bucky’s nose – and, perhaps, get distracted enough by his lips to lean in for a few quick kisses against them – but he couldn’t say _no_. Clint closed his eyes, feeling Bucky take hold of his other hand and slowly walk him out of the field he’d insisted they walk to and back onto the main path. Clint wasn’t quite sure where they were heading, until he heard a familiar soft murmur, like a bunch of people chuckling through a door.

Buck stopped walking and dropped his hands. “No peeking.”

Clint felt those same hands on his hips, manoeuvering him a little to the left, before Bucky wrapped his arm around Clint’s waist. “Okay. Open your eyes.”

“Um…” He blinked, turning to look at the man waiting expectantly at his side, then back to the fenced pen before him. “The chicken coop?”

“No, look at _him._” Bucky pointed, directing Clint’s eyes to the Dominique rooster perched grumpily on top of the roof of the coop.

The bird was hunched into a puff, head twitching as usual, but something was off about him. Or, more to the point, seemed to actually be _on_ him.

Bucky kept talking as Clint tried to process exactly what he was so clearly seeing. “What do you think? I’ll admit it’s a little weird, and Herman was pretty pissed about me doing it, but, uh… He looks cute and toasty, right, doll?

“Bucky, I love you, but what the fuck is...” Clint’s head felt like it was on a permanent swivel as he continued shaking it. He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing; sincerely hoped he was wrong, but had to ask. “Is that Lila’s Four-H rooster in a... a sweater?

“Yeah, a sweater.” Bucky nodded at his side, smile beginning to fall at the edges. “Don’t worry; I got him an extra little heater set up for his coop, too. Plus a heating pad for the roof.”

“Bucky… Babe…” Clint finally turned to face his boyfriend fully, confusion overwhelming even _his_ ability to be blasé. _“Why?”_

“Look, I thought it was weird as hell – or some country thing I wasn’t gonna get – but if it really turns you on and it’s not hurting him, I’m okay with it.” Bucky cupped his right hand against Clint’s cheek “I promise, Clint, you’ve got no reason to be embarrassed over it.”

“Okay with _WHAT?!”_ Clint hadn’t meant for it to come out so desperate and squeaking, but he had some serious concerns.

“J’espérais que tu aimerais l’oiseau…” muttered Bucky with a frown as he looked away, shoulders sagging.

It happened, sometimes. Bucky got over-stressed and slipped out of English and back into something he’d heard more often over the years; usually Russian or French, Romanian once. Luckily, Clint could at least understand him most times. He wouldn’t have needed to, though, to know how disappointed Bucky was. Clint pulled him in for a hug, and Bucky snuggled in under his chin. _“Why_ would I like the bird?”

“C’est un coq…” Bucky shook his head where it was pressed against Clint’s shoulder. “Coq warming…”

“That’s-!” Clint’s mouth slammed shut, for once stopping him from saying the first thing that popped into his head. He opened it to speak again, making a popping sound not unlike a fish drowning in air. Clint pressed his lips together, again, and took a deep breath. Bucky had tried to be _sweet._ It was _wrong_ – on levels Clint hadn’t ever had to recognize before this very instance – but sweet.

“Bucky, I know you have access to the internet…” There had been a time when he hadn’t, because touch screens and metal fingers didn’t always play well together, but, “You have a phone, now.”

“I do, but I didn’t want to look it up on my phone.” Buck shrugged again, leaning more of his weight onto Clint. “I just had JARVIS search for me, and chicken sweaters were all over snapstergram.”

JARVIS? That meant Bucky had searched for _cockwarming_ in the tower – which was its own future nightmare if anyone checked his search history – but also might have explained how this had happened. “Babe, did you turn off safe search?”

“What?” Pulling away, his boyfriend blinked up at him.

_So no…_ Clint pressed down a chuckle. “Peter may be in high school, but JARVIS has safe search on as default, now.”

“So this isn’t what you meant?” Realization dawned in that soft grey gaze.

“No.”

“And that-” Bucky pointed back at the gansey-garbed rooster dozing behind them. “-isn’t turning you on? None of this does it for you, doll?”

Clint did have to laugh at the way Bucky was almost flailing his arm back at Herman and the hens. “Your enthusiasm, maybe – definitely your effort, babe – but not the rooster, no.”

“Oh, thank fuck! I thought it was some ass-backwards country courtship thing I was missing…” Bucky almost collapsed back into him with a relieved sigh. He wrapped his arms around Clint and squeezed. Then he tensed, looking like he’d just seen his own death. “Wanda’s gonna kill me for asking her to knit that for me.”

Clint chuckled, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s worry-lined forehead, trying to sound as stereotypically French as he could. “You asked Wanda to knit you a _coq_-jumper?”

Bucky groaned, smushing his face against Clint’s chest and nodding an affirmative. His voice was muffled against Clint’s jacket. “She only agreed because I said it was _‘integral to our intimate relationship.’”_

“You told Wanda you needed a rooster sweater to get laid?”

His boyfriend’s response was to grumble and bob his head. “Mmhmm…”

“Well, maybe we can make sure you weren’t lying, but inside. Away from the livestock.” Gently stepping back, Clint smiled down at the man in his arms. “That okay with you, babe?”

“Sounds perfect.”

Clint twined their fingers together, and they headed back towards the house.

_ **[One Week Later]** _

“I disabled the kiddie-guard for your account, Snow Princess, so you can go dig up whatever sordid crap you-” Tony was cut off as Barnes reached forward, snatching the tablet from his hands mid-sentence.

“I’ll be quick.”

“Uhp-uhp-uhp, go get your own!” Tony made a grab for the tablet, but Bucky held him at literal arm’s length, already typing one-handed into the keyboard. “Aaand you’re still logged in as me. Great.” He tried, again, to take back the tablet, but Barnes ducked under his arm and twisted out of reach, thumb still tapping away.

“Fine; fine. Just… nothing super illegal? Maybe?” With Barnes showing no sign of responding – or of letting him have the touchpad back – Tony flopped back into another of the meeting room chairs. “So, since I’m going to have to go in there and clear out whatever it was you needed around the safety gate so badly to find, why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for, Coldsnap.”

Barnes eyed him over the tablet and – for a moment – Tony thought he saw the hint of a blush before the other man ducked behind the edge of the screen. “No.”

“Yeah, but – the thing is – I’m going to find out anyway, so…” Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. Adjusting his glasses, he tipped his head back to address the ceiling. “Ya know what, okay. Alright, easy solution. JARVIS?”

“_Sir?”_

“Can you put the Sergeant’s search results up on the main wall?”

“What?” _That_ got Barnes’ attention.

Tony could see him frantically tapping at the screen as JARVIS responded. _“I… do not believe that is advisable.”_

“It’ll be fine, JARVIS; I lived through the eighties.” Leaning back, feet on the table, Tony clicked his tongue, shooting a finger gun at the far wall. “Lets have a show, J-man.”

Several things happened, then, so close that – to an outside observer – they might have seemed simultaneous.

Bucky Barnes cursed – _“Fuck!”_ – and, in his haste to put it down, accidentally snapped the tablet he held in half.

A series of search suggestions, images, text results, and video example responses to the query _‘What is cockwarming?’_ were projected in stunningly high definition on the far wall of the secure meeting room.

And Tony Stark said, “... Huh.”

While Bucky slowly began doing a fair impression of an embarrassed tomato curling into the foetal position, Tony slipped his feet off the table top. He swivelled his chair, turning a slow ninety degrees. “JARVIS, cut visual.”

_“Certainly, Sir.”_

Pulling himself in a scooting roll, Tony eased his chair alongside Bucky’s. He patted gently against that cool metal shoulder, voice settled between soothing and taunting. “You know, Barnes, you could have just asked.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, yes, I am actually a collection of titmice inside a snood!
> 
> _Teehee!_ (Honestly, I said it to myself enough in the writing of this fic that cock no longer even seems like a real word, anymore.)
> 
> Probably not the ending my awesome beta had in mind, but…? I guess Bucky is going to be asking Tony how 21st century sex works. Nothing awkward or inspiring in _that_ pile of insanity, nope.
> 
> **Translations of Bucky’s French:**  
I thought you would like the bird…  
It’s a rooster…


End file.
